The Purge
by Puppeteer of the Realms
Summary: Years have passed since Zim came to terms with the truth, and he has lost hope. But after he gets back on his feet again, a discovery may put the fate of the galaxy at risk. A prelude to The Conspiracy. Slow build up.
1. Depression

A/N: Alright, so here's the deal: this is going to be an experiement.

This is just my second fanfic so far, and for the most part it is going to be the history and events leading to my other fanfic 'The Conspiracy' 170 years in the future. You can follow along with the story as a stand-alone piece, but I highly recomend that you also keep up to date with The Conspiracy (and the sequels to come) because the two are really meant to stand together for a more in-depth story.

And so, I present to you the cataclysm that smashed two worlds together.  
The disaster that shook the galaxy to its core.  
I give you,

_**The Purge**_

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**DISCLAIMER: I do not own or claim to own Invader Zim in any way, the copyright goes to Jhonen Vasquez and Nickelodeon**

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The multitude of displays dividing the three colossal monitors show hundreds of scenes. A few displayed families sitting at home comfortably watching TV together on a couch, some showed similar families in domestic disputes ending in physical violence. Many screens showed the inner workings of factories, offices, intelligence facilities, and a very select few were even showing the going-ons inside of the Membrane Labs.

One of the many screens displayed the home of the Membrane family, where Gaz sat on the couch viciously slaying vampire piggies on her Game Slave 2. She was playing Vampire Piggy Hunter, one of her classic favorites. The screen beside the one showing gaz was of the garage housing Tak's ship. Very bright, blue flickering light bathed the wall behind the ship as Dib was no doubt modifying the structure of the nearly restored custom-job cobbled together with scrap metal into a state-of-the-art vessel.

The sun was setting and the hundreds of subjects on the displays were winding down for the night. Many of the screens darkened as the lights were being turned off and the inhabitants of the city all started going to bed.

Zim sat in the chair facing the monitors, slouching with his arms hanging over the edges. His eyes were half closed as he blankly stared at the monitors, not watching any single screen in particular. Five years had passed since he arrived on Earth on his supposed 'secret mission' issued by the Tallest, and four years have passed since Zim finally stopped denying the truth that he was exiled. He bitterly regrets believing their lies, when at the time he refused to believe the nay-sayers of his people.

On two different occasions, irkens hell-bent on completing their vendetta against Zim have informed him that his mission was fake, and both times Zim believed them to be spouting blatant lies.

For the first year after coming to terms with the realization, Zim was crushed. He was dead inside. On a few occasions, he very nearly died of starvation because of a perpetual state of apathy. His mission was everything, it was his only reason for living. He truly thought himself to be an Invader, one of the greats, second only to the Tallest themselves. He had no reason to live anymore, so for several months he did nothing but mope around the base and just barely stay over the edge of keeping himself alive.

After that much time had passed without so much as a peep from Zim, Dib's paranoia peaked, and he took action. That long without going to skool or trying to plague the city with mutant rats? Never a good sign in Dib's book. For a few days he staked out his house, watching from the outside for anything out of the ordinary. When nothing happened, he worked up the courage to go inside to drag Zim out if necessary and thwart whatever diabolic scheme he was hatching.

He wore the stealth suit he used once before to infiltrate the base, and sneakily approached the front door. After nothing happened, he walked up to the door itself. Not even the gnome sentries paid him any heed, so he walked in. The inside of the base was in shambles from neglect and Gir was simply sitting on the couch watching the Angry Monkey show on the cracked flat-screen display. Gir only waved at Dib as he entered and returned his attention to the show. Dib squinted one eye as he passed and he removed the mask, seeing no need for it. He used the only entrance into the lower base he knew of in the trash can and descended into Zim's lair.

He wandered around the base snapping pictures with his camera until he came upon the room with the three giant displays. Then as now, the screens show hundreds of different places with hidden cameras and spybots. Dib marvelled at the sight, scrolling his vision from left to right until he noticed that the chair in the middle of the room wasn't empty.

"Ah! Zim!" he screeched and jumped back, covering his face while expecting to be jumped by Zim and ejected from the base. Instead, Zim simply sat there with the same deadpan expression. Dib slowly lowered his guard and approached the alien slouched in the chair. He looked horrible, his eyes were sunk in with dark rings surrounding them. His skin was more pale, and his body was boney and skinny form malnutrition. Dib had a puzzled expression as he walked next to him and still got no rise out of the supposed 'mighty Irken Invader' he still thought Zim to be. "Um... Zim?" he asked, with a small amount of concern in his voice.

Zim's eyes slowly drifted to lazily meet Dib. Until that moment, his mind was just static, not really paying attention to anything. "Dib-..." he didn't know what title to give him anymore, since he technically wasn't his enemy. "Dib-human... what do you want?" he quietly asked, barely mustering the strength, or will for that matter, to speak.

Dib gestured to Zim with his arms outstretched, "What... what happened to you?"

Zim meekly explained his predicament, and bid him to leave him in peace. For the following months, Dib checked in on Zim every few days to see if he had come out of his funk, but he never did. His arch-enemy had lost the will to live, and now all that was left was a man, a broken down, beaten man who has lost everything. Dib reluctantly decided to help Zim out of what ever dark place his head was in. He felt partly responsible for the hand fate had dealt the unfortunate alien.

No being deserves to suffer alone the way he has.

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A/N: If you felt this chapter was really slow, there's a reason for that: I'm trying to set the tone for the events to come.

As you can imagine, almost all of the character interaction in this story is going to be out of character, as none of them have ever been in the situations that they are going to meet.

I'm going to be writing this in tandem with The Conspiracy, so apologies in advance for any delay there will likely be between chapters.

Thank you for your time, and thank you for reading my second tale of intrigue!  
As always, See you on the other side~


	2. Diagnosis

A/N: Man, I'm having a really hard time writing this story. Not that it's hard to come up with words, or descriptions and things like that, it's just that I actually planned to write my first fanfic for a very long time now, this one was a spur-of-the-moment thing. That's also not to say that I don't like writing this, it's just more challenging, especially when music as my muse is starting to fail me as it's really hard to find songs for inspiration to make certain scenes.

Speaking of music, I had an idea. Whenever I write a chapter, or a series of chapters, I always listen to music. First, I need to find a song that really suits the scene, this is my muse. Then I just put everything on shuffle and use it as my background inspiration.

What I'm getting at, is that if anyone would like to know the song I used as my muse, I can post it at the beginning of each chapter, I thought that might make it more significant with accurate ambience while reading my stories.

Wow... that sounded a lot less conceded in my head... anyway, just let me know and I can post my muse if anyone would like to ^_^

As I'm on that note, I'd like to go ahead and do that for this chapter: My muse for the first part of the chapter was 'I Alone' by Random Rab. The second part of the chapter (with Zim and Dib) was written mostly to 'One Rainy Day' by Godsmack. Let me know what you think and I may or may not continue to post the songs. And of course I own none of the songs.

Update: Please review! I may be my own worst critic, but seriously, I'm only one person, with one pair of eyes. I can't tell if I'm doing something wrong, if my chapters are boring and just drag on or what have you. I really need any input you can give, because I can't gauge my own progress without feedback, and I value any and all feedback I get because it serves two purposes: to make me a better writer, and to make my story more entertaining for my readers.

See you on the other side~

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**DISCLAIMER: I do not own or claim to own Invader Zim in any way, the copyright goes to Jhonen Vasquez and Nickelodeon**

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Zim sat up in the chair as the only remaining screens with activity expanded to take up the remaining space from the blank ones. Only a handful of screens were displayed on the large monitors now, in the area of twenty to thirty active feeds. The ones from the Membrane home were all still active and transmitting. There was one stationary camera in the living room, one in the garage, and one in each bedroom. He usually kept those in bedrooms offline to respect privacy. Three mobile spider-spybots were also in the Membrane household.

Gaz was still sitting on the couch playing her GS2, her eyes drooping as she grew more sleepy. In the garage, Dib was covering Tak's ship with a tarp and putting away his welders and cutting torches. Zim stood, clasped his hands behind him, and walked closer to the center screen. "Computer," he said in a quiet voice, "isolate the home." Less than a second later, the remaining screens turned black and the center screen divided seven screens displaying the feeds from Dib and Gaz Membrane's home. He never bothered with bugging the house for the professor, as he was usually not present. He had cameras at the Membrane Labs for that.

Dib finished squaring away the last of his tools and turned out the lights to the garage. Zim and Dib were going into their senior year, with Gaz following a year behind as a junior in the month to come. The two humans had aged normally over the last five years, growing several inches more, now dwarfing the slower aging irken. The scythe-like lock of hair on Dib's head had gotten longer and sharply kinked before continuing in the original direction. It appeared as though the false-future that Zim had simulated years ago to get Dib to fess up accurately predicted the way Dib himself would age.

Gaz on the other hand, had matured very quickly for her age into a shapely woman. Her hair had grown longer, and the mandibles she had styled her hair in when she was younger were now draped down her chest, and her pointed bangs were longer and resembled a downward scythe. Gaz had grown into a beautiful, terrifying woman who still had a demonic aura which threatened doom should you cross her.

Dib had grown to a height of five foot eight, Gaz was second at five six, and Zim, who remained almost unaffected by the tests of time, followed behind at a measly five feet tall. To the ignorant, lazy-eye of the people in the city however, there was still nothing amiss of a kid with green skin, no nose or ears and a backpack permantly grafted to his back who seemingly never aged. It made keeping a cover extraordinarily easy to do.

Dib locked up the garage and walked into the living room, where he started hearing gentle snoring from the couch. Gaz's head was reclining back into the couch asleep. In one of her hands, her GS2's screen was black with three words in red letters written: 'YOU ARE DEAD'. Dib looked down at his sleeping sister and smiled. He took the portable gaming system from her hand, turned it off and slipped it in a pocket of his long black trenchcoat. With the utmost care, Dib slid his left arm behind Gaz's knees, and his right behind her back, then slowly picked her up off the couch. He slowly carried his unconscious sister upstairs to her room, still sound asleep in his arms.

He walked backwards through the door to open it, and carried Gaz to her bed. He layed her down and took off her steel-toed boots, then pulled the blanket over her. The two siblings never showed anything past pointed banter during the day, but it was clear from what Zim was seeing that the two of them truly cared for each other. Dib turned off the lamp in her room and started leaving as red eyes started dimly glowing in the dark. He realized Gaz's security dolls no longer recognized him as a non-threat and he quietly hurried out the door and slowly shut it. Dib yawned and walked to his room to file in to bed himself.

Zim simply stared at the screen showing an unconscious Gaz sleeping soundly and peacefully. He didn't fully understand the concept of family, but he knew the bond the Dib-human and Gaz-sister had was sacred, and not to be trifled with. He pinched the skin between his eyes with his thumb and forefinger with his eyes closed in contemplation. "Kill feed," he flatly said in no particular direction. Immediately, the screens blanked and were powered down. _If it weren't for them... _he thought, then let his mind trail off in rememberance.

* * *

Three and a half years ago, Dib had resolved to temporarily hold a truce with his nemesis, in order to bring him back from the brink of emotional-death. Dib found it incredibly hard to get through Zim's barrier of emotional muck to try and help him on his feet again, but he stayed the course. For the first few days, he seldom spoke and simply helped Zim from place to place through his base by holding one of the alien's limp green arms over his shoulder, and getting him to eat or taking him to the medical bay to get a direct feed of nutrients. Surprisingly enough, Computer helped guide Dib around the base and direct him through the proceedures of using Irken equipment, as Zim was in no condition to command Computer to do so. It was as if it deemed Dib worthy to the task of mending Zim's wounds.

Zim reluctantly allowed the human to resuscitate him. If he had his way, he would bar any entry to the base to keep the human at bay, but he had not the strength to deny him. So he simply settled for disliking the human for returning his health, and keeping him alive. He hated feeling so weak, so helpless. His once bitter enemy was the only thing keeping him alive. His nemesis was the only being in the galaxy that cared to put up the effort. Zim gritted his teeth and averted his eyes from the human. _What have I been reduced to? Some worthless rescue?!_

Zim clenched his fist and slammed it onto the table he was laying on. They were in the medical bay again, this time Computer instructed Dib to plug two cables dangled from the ceiling into Zim's PAK to diagnose any possible issues. Zim was laying on his side with his back to the human as he scowled and brought his knees closer to his body. He felt so vulnerable, and he mentally scolded himself for allowing his emotions to get through.

"Are you alright?" Dib asked after Zim slammed his fist into the table. He didn't answer and Dib outwardly shrugged it off, but he knew that the alien was still suffering. On the terminal in front of Dib, the diagnosis of Zim's PAK was displayed. The systems therein started fileing off with their status, and any required maintainance or abnormalities after them. Everything seemed in order until one of the lines of code came back. Red indicators were flashing and more text began to fill the screen. Dib could only watch and let Computer do the work as all of the information was displayed in Irken writing. Random lines of code and strings of shifting 1s and 0s flooded the console and eventually kicked the system offline. Dib stared at the black screen confused. "Uumm... Computer? What just happened?" he nervously asked and backed away from the smoking console.

Zim didn't turn around to add to the questioning, but he looked the edge of his vision as he listened intently to find out what surprised the Dib-human. "It appears that some of the programming in Zim's PAK has become corrupted and is self-replicating," Computer stated with a tone of curiosity.

_Self-replicating?_ "What does that mean for Zim?" he asked.

"Well, PAKs are essentially what make the modern irken, irken. It's like a second brain, and each newborn smeet is given a PAK which is programed to make the irken follow the rules of the Irken empire to the letter." Zim's scowl deepened as he saw where computer was going with this. "Zim's PAK was actually a prototype intended for the next breed of irken soldiers, but was faulty, so the project was scrapped. Zim is a defect," Computer finished.

Zim brought his knees up and hugged himself into his chest. He clenched his eyes shut and tried to hold back the tears. _Irken do not feel emotions... they do not have the weakness... they do not cry... they do not _feel_ this pain..._ Zim was a defective, he was a defect at birth, and the shame of his people. His mission was a joke, his status as an Invader was a joke, his entire existence was a total joke.

Computer continued his explanation, "There is a line of code in his PAK that is changing the entire structure of the system. It's evolving, changing parameters to suit new purposes. Whatever it's doing, it doesn't want anyone to see. A virus drilled its way through my firewall and into the base, I had to short out the terminal to stop the transer." Computer paused and the booming voice grew darker when he spoke again, "I was unsuccessful, something did get through. It sent a broadcast through space, I don't know what it said or where it's going."

Dib pondered a moment while watching Zim, "That's all well and horrible, but-" he gestured to the away-facing Zim, "-that doesn't answer my question."

Momentary silence filled the room. "To be completely honest, I don't know what this means for Zim. Never has he had PAK maintainance as the PAK itself tried to lash out like this."

"Lash out like this... are you saying that his PAK _intentionally _fought back? That it has anger?" Dib asked, pondering the implications of sentient machinery. Well, of course there was Computer, a fully aware computer. But this was different, right? It was something permantly attached to every irken. Right?

"I can't say for sure, but yeah, it looks like it."

Zim sat up and let his legs hang from the side of the table, still with his back toward the human. Dib felt something was amiss, and Zim knew something he didn't. "What do we need to repair it?" Dib asked with a suspicious tone.

On the table, Zim sat straighter and stared at the wall. "We need irken hands," he said. "We need someone versed in the workings of a PAK, someone we can trust." His tone got lower and he propped his forehead on his hands, with his elbows on his knees. "We need someone not affiliated with the Irken Empire," he said with something dark edging his words, but Dib couldn't put his finger on what exactly it was, then his eyes widened at what Zim was getting at. "We need Tak."

Dib's mouth was hanging agape. Zim was trying to reach out for help, and Dib realized what was hiding in Zim's voice: regret.


End file.
